ABC Mini-Encyclopedia

Children in the Middle East

What we all wish, particularly for the children in the Middle East on both sides, is peace and for peace to come as soon as possible.

Instead of this, unfortunately, in the Palestinian areas we have recurring conflicts, sometimes armed conflicts with all their ugliness. Children are the most defenseless suffering party in all conflicts - and for Palestinian children it is even more so.

Because, sadly, beyond the inevitable suffering in any war zone, Palestinian children have become pawns of their political and military leaders. Inside their schools, children are subjected to hate-speech, defamatory indoctrination and glorification of death and suicide bombings. Outside the schools, they are forced and coerced into participating in acts of war and terror, and are used as human shields. Several Palestinian minors have been indoctrinated, trained and sent on suicide missions, among them also the developmentally challenged and other helpless minors.

All these are in blatant violation of international law; are actually war crimes. Led today, not surprisingly, by the de-facto Palestinian leadership, the Gazan Hamas regime itself.

Israeli children have always been deliberately targeted by Palestinian terror. They want to harm Israelis where it hurts most; to kill and terrorize their beloved children; like the sniper killing of a 10 month-old baby, Shalhevet Paz, or the point blank extermination of the four daughters (age 3 to 11) of Tali Hatuel, or by indiscriminate rocket shelling of civilian targets, schools and kindergartens in Sderot. After a total 14 Israeli civilians killed (incl. three 4-years-olds) by Kassam rockets in Sderot (an equivalent of 600 rocket victims in the US, proportionally!) children there had to learn in school-buildings fortified like concrete bunkers, and be alert for the air-raid alarms which sounded whenever a Kassam rocket was launched, several times daily, leaving them 15 seconds to run to shelters and take all protective measures.

To counterbalance their bad name for targeting of Israeli children, Palestinians ‘invented' Pallywood, staging and manufacturing movies with lies and libels against Israelis ‘killing' Pal children, like the Al-Durra myth.

Jewish love of children is proverbial, sometimes ridiculed and self-ridiculed for its exaggerations. One can see a similar trend in Israeli Arab families. There is a hope that this attitude will also ‘infect' Israel's Arab neighbors. Because, as Golda Meir said once: "There will be peace in Middle-East when the Arabs start to love their children more than they hate us"